Growth brings challenges. Our Armor Situation.
Since starting this business in 2015, I've learned several key lessons that stick with me as we continue to evolve, grown, and refine what we do as a team. One of those important lessons is: You will always have no shortage of problems in any business. Challenges will arise every single day. Some are extremely small, simply a nuisance. Others change the course of the business. We find ourselves in the latter situation currently.
We are currently at a shortage of our legacy AR550 armor, and the mill cannot keep up with what we are producing for the range builds across the country. Does that affect our business and lead times? Yes. Is it also an extremely exciting era for TA Targets? Also yes.
What this means in short is our legacy line of AR550 products will take us longer to produce for a short window of time. Some of our products (like bases, posts, brackets, mounts) are unaffected. However, our entire line of 3/8" and 1/2" AR550 strike plates are absolutely affected.
Our armor shipment was stated to be scheduled for delivery mid-August. That was pushed back to the end of October by our mill. While that is unfortunate, there is good news that we feel we should discuss. We'll talk about that throughout this blog. Let's talk about what 2026 looked like so far, and what we are changing and refining going forward.
Leaning Into Legacy Ranges
You can ship somebody the best plate in the world and still leave them with a bad place to train. Most of this industry is fine with that, because the transaction closed and the box shipped. We knew that legacy range builders needed more coaching and more support throughout the process to pave the way towards legacy ranges across the country.
Here is the reality few are talking about: Ranges across the country are dying. They are underfunded, falling apart, and the owners are burned out, ready to throw in the towel. What happens when we no longer have the ranges to train and exercise our fundamental right to bear arms? You can do the simple math: when ranges die, exercising our rights and training with our defensive and offensive weapons becomes nearly impossible. This isn't just about ranges, this is about protecting our human rights.
So this year we went after the whole thing. Helping ranges and land owners plan out berms, spacing, drainage, distance, and steel that matches what the property can actually support. Some of the larger examples include ranges in Colorado, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and most recently, Texas.
Colorado: two ranges on one property, designed around the mountain instead of against it, with a precision lane past 1,100 yards where the Goliath .50 BMG systems still ring at the far end.
Tennessee: forty yards deep, twenty five wide, built for a private land owner who wanted movement.
Wisconsin: 400 acres, three ranges, an 800-yard lane cut through timber, built by a man who wanted to know what his boys would still be shooting on after he was gone.
Texas: a massive commercial range facility in Dublin, TX went live under the name Cowboy Capital Ventures. Built for the community, with four pistol bays, two large flat ranges, a 300-yard range, a shotgun range, an archery range, a pro shop, and much more.
We redefined what TA Targets is and where we live inside of range projects so we can be positioned to build higher performance ranges across the country. We have an audacious goal to build 50 ranges in the next 3 years. We want to see at least one range with the TA certificate of approval in every state. We know the impact this will have on you as you train to defend what you love, and we know that the current state of ranges needs revitalized. So we dug in, created the battle plan, and started. Like all new initiatives, there was a cost to this new pathway.
What It Cost TA Targets
A build like that consumes a production schedule, and we knew that going in.
What we didn't expect to see (honestly) was the demand. We thought a few people this year would want us to help with their range builds. What happened? HUNDREDS of people started reaching out with properties of all sizes in various stages of the process. It was an absolutely overwhelming amount of people reaching out, and it put an immense pressure on every system inside of our company. Again, good problems, but real pressure. Oh, remember how diamonds are formed? Yeah, that's basically where we are at.
The warehouse that felt too big two years ago is too small now. We're at the point where we need to gut it and reorganize it for efficiency. We are working through plans to add a new shop, new equipment, new personnel, and revamping our raw material supply lines.
We've been here before. Six years ago we told you a version of this: demand had outrun what the shop could produce, and we'd rather hand you the truth. That was 2020, and it happened to us. This time, catastrophic world events didn't dictate the path, we simply followed where we felt God called us to with open eyes and open minds.
In business, you cannot control everything. You can only try to position yourself as best as possible. We ordered the next batch of AR550 back in May, and due to events outside our control, it still hasn't landed yet. The crazy part: in normal years, we'd be fine. We'd still have armor to produce through Q4. But 2026 wasn't a normal year, it was a completely new era of this company, and our customers across the country responded en masse.
If You want to Order One Target (or a small batch), Read This Part
Here's the reality, there will be lead times. We physically do not have the AR550 on hand until the next batch arrives. We fully understand that folks who are looking to buy 1 or 2 systems might see that as a no-go situation. If you are looking for fast, premium steel, we won't be able to deliver the way we normally would. We just want to be transparent and state that these lead times are :
1.) Not typical. The explosive growth of our company, faster utilization of AR550, and longer lead times from the mill are compounding to create this situation. Exciting as this era is, we understand if that causes some frustration, and we understand if that means you need to buy somewhere else for now.
2.) Not forever. This is a small bump in the road as our team continues to build the systems, personnel, and infrastructure to manage our direct to customer orders along with multi-six-figure (and seven figure) range builds.
If we're pouring all this energy into ranches and 400+-acre properties, what happens to the man with forty yards behind the barn and one gong on the way?
That person is the reason any of this exists. A lot of the ground we walked this year started as a single target somebody hung ten years ago and kept coming back to. Most people don't build an 800-yard lane first. You build it after a decade of finding out you're not done. Cut off the man buying his first plate and you've cut off every range you'd ever build.
So no, we didn't trade you for the big properties and big builds. We're building toward the thing your range might be in twenty years. There isn't a shift in prioritization. Simply put: All orders from this point until the armor lands will experience the same delay....for a short time.
What This Means for Your Order
If you want something we manufactured and built ahead of the shortage, your lead time doesn't change. Order it today. This would include our Bases, Armored Posts, Armored T-Post, Genesis AR500 products, and most of our AR550 gongs. If that's what you are hunting for, we still have products and material to produce.
If you are reaching out to us for our Legacy AR550 products, building your own range, etc... Those orders will begin production at the end of October. This also affects our range installations. We are booked through most of the rest of 2026. We may have some openings in December, but most range builds will be executed in Q1 2027 for clients locking it in now. Again, we are just being transparent, setting the right standard, and communicating what we face and what we are doing about it.
What about changing our armor to something more available?
We refuse to cut a target from thinner stock to hold a date. If you need steel on the ground next week, tell us. We'll tell you whether it's in the racks or looking to be produced next month. Lead times are updated on the affected products, so check there first.
But here is one thing we will not do, and this sets TA apart from the rest: We are extremely particular about the AR550 we run. Very few mills in the US produce steel to our specification, and it's important we maintain that specification. We could easily do what many other company manufacturing steel targets will do and simply shop every mill for "AR550" and call it good enough. Are we always testing new proprietary AR550/AR600 blends behind the scenes? Yes, but that can take us years to evaluate a single new material to prove it will perform. That's not something we are willing to do haphazardly. We put warranties and guarantees on our products to hold us accountable and ensure you have the highest performance systems possible. Going with a lower quality option to fill a gap simply isn't in alignment with our core values.
We will simply be transparent, explain where we are at, and what we are doing to grow to the next level to protect the excellent products we make and the experience we desire to give to each client.
So where are we headed from here?
2027 is shaping up to be an even higher demand year than 2026 has been so far. We are already booking range builds into 2027, so the horizon is extremely exciting. For that reason, we are making several key changes towards the end of 2026 and into 2027.
1.) New shop build. We planned to really begin this process in 2028. Our team is still cautiously moving towards this, and we are moving that up in the timeline. Everyone remembers 2020 where companies made too many moves too fast and stretched themselves thin. We need to be good stewards of the business and make wise moves at the right time. For now, we are continuing the planning phase for the new shop. This would dramatically increase our efficiency, afford more assembly space, and offer dedicated build stations for our larger six-figure+ range fit outs.
2.) Hiring. TA Targets will be adding several positions as we enter 2027. Again, we do this cautiously. Hiring new team members is a huge responsibility. Protecting our culture is number one, but also creating clear roles and plugging the right person into that role is paramount. More information will come out about that as we enter into 2027.
3.) Raw materials. The new shop will allow us to carry more materials for production. We are very limited on space in our current footprint, and we have no more space to hold raw materials. That has limited our ability to stock what we need, and we know that we need the new shop to fully correct the material flows. For now, we are gutting the current shop and rebuilding with efficiency of storage, assembly, and processing in mind.
We know that lead times suck. We hate to have to communicate that we are in the middle of rapid growth, but we also are excited to see where God leads this team and what he has in store for us. If you are a diehard TA fan, all of this is exciting. It means more people are experiencing our products, and more people are leaning on us to build Legacy ranges. You benefit from that as we achieve our objective of building 50 ranges across the country. We truly appreciate your support over the last 11 (almost 12!) years as TA has grown. We will provide more updates as the armor lands and we start production up once again.
If you feel called to support us and you are looking for high performance systems, we ask that you continue to support us by placing an order and offer us grace and understanding as we navigate this season of business.
There is only one place left to go: Onward.
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